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The warning follows Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to keep Scotland’s most populous city in a tier three lockdown. Speaking on BBC Newsnight, John Swinney, who is also the Cabinet Secretary for Covid recovery, laid bare the Government’s plans to tackle the crisis.
He said: “The cases are at an uncomfortably high level although…we are seeing evidence of those stabilising.
“We are also putting in a significant amount of very targeted activity in relation to speeding up vaccination and expanding testing substantially to try and tackle the presence of the new variant within particular parts of Glasgow.
“That’s having an effect of stabilising the prevalence of the virus.”
The Indian variant has been reported in roughly two postcodes of Glasgow which is home to over 600,000 people.
Last week, there was hope the city would join the rest of the country in tier two, but Scotland’s first minister dashed any expectations of lockdown easing, saying that there was still concern about an outbreak of the new variant.
Ms Sturgeon reported that half of the new Covid cases in the city are the Indian variant.
She added that she is hopeful the city would be moved down a level next week with a final decision made on Tuesday.
When asked whether vaccine reluctance was a factor in the rising cases of the Indian variant, Mr Swinney said that did not appear to be the case.
READ MORE: Indian variant ‘hospitalises six people’ in Scotland
The rest of Scotland is set to return to a level one lockdown on June 7 and then move to level zero, suggesting something close to normality, on June 28.
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